Title

The 1622 Tierra Firme Fleet - An Account of the Disaster and the People - The People on the Nuestra Senora de Atocha and Santa Margarita

Description

In September of 1622, the Spanish Tierra Firme fleet was struck by a hurricane one day after it had left Havana, Cuba. The twenty-eight ships were battered by the storm, and seven of them were sunk near the Florida Keys. The disaster was a tremendous loss for Spain, with hundreds of people killed and valuable cargoes dashed to the bottom of the sea. This study is centered on an account of the tragedy that was written in Havana in November of 1622, which details the disaster and the people on the galleons Nuestra Señora de Atocha and Santa Margarita. This relation is supplemented by other, more detailed lists of people found in the Archives of the Indies in Seville. Further investigations into the individual life-histories of those on the two doomed galleons give a fuller understanding of who these people were, why they were sailing, and how their presence is sometimes recognized in the archaeological record.

Source: The 1622 Tierra Firme Fleet - An Account of the Disaster and the People (Corey Malcom, Ph.D., Director of Archaeology, Mel Fisher Maritime Museum OP No.1, 2019)